If you are a photographer, and you buy online as I do, you will probably buy from Amazon.com. I recently purchased two items from Rainbow Imaging www.rainbowimaging.biz, and only one item was received.

I have no problem with people making mistakes, I've made them too. So, I wrote a polite letter asking them to send the missing item which was listed in the packing slip. They didn't respond. The next day, I sent off another letter, more strongly worded. Still, no response. The third day, today, I sent a third letter, and still no response. I went to their web site to send them an online email on the "Contact Us" section, but twice it errored out and would not send the email.

Finally, I sent a letter to Amazon, and they were prompt and helpful. They told me a refund was given the previous day by the seller. The seller, Rainbow Imaging, never bothered to let me know via email or any other way.

Perhaps one should be happy with the refund, but any time a seller fails to communicate or apologize and make good on a mistake, they become suspect. I feel had I not been a pain in their back, they would never have bothered to give me any refund. I also feel their online "Contact" page is deliberately not working, as they have no email or phone number listed anywhere on their pages. This just adds more suspicion to their style of business.

This is not the first time I've had bad experience with NY online businesses, they seem to be very shady with the exception of a few.